I'd be surprised if "Extreme Movie" didn't set a record for an extreme amount of credited writers: no less than TEN writers (including "SNL" writers Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, Will Forte and John Solomon) are credited with the script. While it's a bit more entertaining (although that's not saying all that much) than the "Movie" parodies by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ("Date Movie", "Disaster Movie", "Epic Movie") one wonders if this picture was ignored because people thought it was another in a line of those sorts of parodies.

In fact, I was one of those people, and thought "Extreme Movie" was just another movie parody when it's a different creature entirely. The picture plays out like an "SNL" episode - rather than a cohesive film, it's actually a bizarre series of sketches - some of which get a chuckle and quite a few of which just fail entirely (largely because they revolve around stale sex jokes.) Some of them are funny just because they're awful.

The picture focuses on Mike (Ryan Pinkston, formerly of "Punk'd") trying to get Stacy (Cherilyn Wilson) to notice him. However, throughout the movie various obstacles get in the way. Between various scenes of Mike trying to figure out a way to talk to Stacy, we get a series of raunchy skits with other teens, including a couple of guys who try to create a woman using their computer and don't exactly get the results they wanted, a puppet who takes advantage when a guy leaves his girlfriend to go to the bathroom, one where a girl takes "comfortable" farting to a new level and a few other odds and ends (including actor Matthew Lillard doing PSA's.)

Before it's all over, we even get one of the worst comedic song-and-dance numbers I've seen in ages. There's also the matter of the budget: while "Date Movie" and "Epic Movie" were terrible, at least they could afford sets. "Extreme Movie" literally looks like it was thrown together over the course of a weekend for a few bucks (the budget was reportedly a million bucks, and I'm curious where that million bucks all went.) The two directors (who actually wrote to Dustin Hoffman and Gene Wilder about taking a role in the movie) were inspired by Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask", and I can't imagine what Woody Allen would think about the results - while having a bunch of reasonably well-regarded writers all work together on a sketch comedy movie doesn't sound like a bad idea, the results are mostly a mess.

The performances don't help matters, unfortunately: Michael Cera and Frankie Muniz look uncomfortable in their scenes, and Pinkston appears almost bored. The only one who really throws themselves into the bit is Andy Milonakis, who plays a character who'd rather be in love with a fake girl than one of the popular girls at school.

There's something to the idea of a bunch of comedians working together on a sketch comedy movie, but the results here are subpar - while there are a few laughs to be found, I was hoping for more than stale bathroom humor.